Tag: drought

Climate Collapse is the Biggest Threat to Humanity – Where’s the Protests?

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (18.08.26), kinda repeating myself. So much evidence of climate change, so little protection for the people. It is difficult to focus on any key link that can pull the movement forward and back into action, yesterday heat, tomorrow floods, January freeze…Britain, shielded by the “Gulf Stream”, has infrastructure only resilient to weather between +5C and +25C. We are woefully ill-equipped for anything outside that, including the extreme weight of rain modelled and expected this winter. Pressure has be brought to bear on government for massive investment in both adaptation and mitigation – but the opposite is happening: more oil and gas extraction. A declaration that the bulk of working people are expendable. Protest!

The unedited version below, or spread the pic for the published article.

The fires are still not out yet already we are looking forward to Autumn floods. When the rains come, the hardened and baked soil will reject the drenching, water left standing on the surface and fast-flowing downhill. There shall be floods. 

Five heatwaves on, Summer not yet finished, the section of the international culture-wars concerned with Climate Change has projected a grotesque level of disinformation. Despite all the evidence – record temperatures rising year-on-year; dramatic sea temperatures rise off-the-charts; acceleration of glacial melt and antarctic ice collapse the size of whole nations; a reverse of the decline in fossil fuel emissions – the deniers persist in negating the climate emergency.

Tory Leader, Badenoch, pledges to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act, which includes the target for net zero emissions by 2050, representing a U-turn from her party’s previous commitments to climate action. This is in response to Farage’s rants about “woke Britain” needing to embrace higher temperatures, pledging to scrap “net zero” to cut energy bills and replacing it with a focus on energy security and expanding oil and gas extraction, the precise opposite of what is needed.

The British Psychological Society has researched this media coverage, discovering one-third of the published heatwave images offered positive “fun in the sun” narratives. Our newspapers have overwhelmingly reflected the right-wing climate sceptics. Approximately 80% of UK media coverage of this Summer’s heatwaves has depicted people enjoying the weather, often overlooking the serious risks associated with extreme heat. It is a form of climate denial, a default propaganda downplaying the impact, the threats and the suffering. We must be “woke” to worry. 

Pictures of burning houses have a commentary the omits to explore the lack of insurance coverage or government assistance. Film of exhausted fire fighters says nothing of the 30% cuts to this emergency service over the past 12 years which has left sparse protection despite heroic efforts. Coverage of wildfires barely mention not only the wildlife losses but the destruction of the local ecology. The loss of insect and plantlife would take 15-20 years to replace if, that is, there was a return to normal conditions. But there won’t be. 

These images have a serious impact on how we understand and think about climate change. They’re shared and amplified by the conspiracy theorists and far-Right Climate deniers across all social media to glorify our descent towards catastrophe. And the broadcast “positive spin” is sponsored by the fossil fuel companies seeking to maintain their industry’s prestige and profits. 

Such media-wide positive spin on this immediate and growing threat to life has had an impact. The question is asked, “where have all the climate protesters gone” at a time of the most obvious climate crisis? Draconian laws implemented against protesters from Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, and Extinction Rebellion has jailed or muzzled most of the most able activists. Corporate control of mass media has muffled the rest of us. And it has been too hot to run about!

Climate Change is no “Act of God”. The extra weather is a result of the accumulation of gases in the atmosphere that prevent the escape of excess heat from the planet. These gases are created by humans burning fossil fuels. Global heating emissions are rising again across the Earth’s North West, a direct result of the success of oil and gas corporations and their paid-for politicians to downplay and obfuscate the scale of destruction they are wreaking.

The crossing of the 1.5C global temperature increase means more heating is built-in. Geographic Europe is the fastest heating continent. Britains will increasingly suffer. The 3,000+ excess deaths from this summers heatwaves, reported by the Met Office, are a symbolic and very partial example of the disruption to come. This year’s harvest failures, food shortages and food price-hikes will be replicated and worsened next year. 

We need emergency mitigation and adaptation in equal measure. For this to happen we need to shout out with all our might against the prevaricators, the distractors, the fossil fuel spinners and liars. This is a climate emergency, an existential crisis, the greatest threat to humanity across all our history according to the scientific consensus.  

Amidst all this, the legal case for opening of the new Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field in UK waters is still being pursued by the government. Whilst the public consultation closed yesterday, the corporate pressure continues. We must protest!

Screenshot
Screenshot

Human Intelligence at a Premium

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment column on the daily Plymouth Herald newspaper (11.8.26), beginning what should prove to be a series of arguments against the rise of Artificial Intelligence and its gas-guzzling infrastructure. My comments are edited at the paper each time, and you may spot the changes by use of the word “I”. I don’t write it in the first person for any publication, so this is a glaring correction signifying other changes. The process has been exaggerated since the legal challenge to an earlier column of mine, by Zionists. Ho hum, such are the times, but I can assure you I check my facts and research daily, not once a week!

It’s also never my headline.

The unedited version is below and at my Blog site, or expand the picture below to read the published version.

Stop AI Now!

What is the very worst thing we can do in a drought? Commit to more water use. It’s obvious really. Consequently, we are each told to preserve water, from fewer showers to hosepipe bans. Suddenly water is our individual responsibility.

That is a Great Lie. One of the many of this freshly dystopian era. We know that the water companies who have invested over the past half-century in their shareholder’s dividends rather than our water infrastructure leak a quarter to a third of all the treated drinking water through rusted pipes before it reaches our homes.

We know that industry uses 80% our potable water, only 20% coming through our taps for rehydration, washing and gardening.

Clearly it’s not all down to us.

Yet, in this Age of Climate Change, the industrial corporations supported by government are creating new demands on water supplies that eclipse anything we can manage in terms of water conservation.

The Data Centres being fast-tracked in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) require quantities of clean, processed drinking water as the first priority for the privatised water companies who already cannot maintain domestic supplies.

It is not the private consumer who is profligate. We are not guilty parties.

By 2030 data centres across the world will require the same water-useage as 1.3billion people. Currently there are at least 2.1 billion people in the world living without access to safe water at home, with one in four people without safely managed drinking water.

This is not just an issue for people in the Global South, already reeling from fires and floods. Climate change is hitting the rich North West is suffering too. In the United States, the sudden investment in AI Data Centres, representing the deepening Cold War competition with China, is resulting in these new massive industrial facilities pulling millions of gallons of the precious public water reserves dependent on groundwater, springs, wells, and aquifers that recharge too slowly. The long-term effects on farms, livestock, creeks, tourism, fishing and conservation are already visible.

Parts of the US are not only in drought but in a crisis caused by the diversion of water from agriculture and homes to Data Centres. Entire electricity generating plants have been diverted away from domestic supply to provide the huge power required by these computing hubs, with decommissioned old nuclear power plants reopened. Fossil-fuelled electricity generators feeding these megawatt guzzling computers are exacerbating the climate crisis. Microsoft has released emissions data showing an increase of 25% in the past year alone, matching Google’s increase of 25% and Amazon 16%, breaking all climate pledges to mitigate the climate catastrophe.

The International Energy Agency estimates that a typical AI-focused data centre consumes as much as 100,000 households. Some of them that we’re seeing built are 20 times that amount. Ofgem has reported on 140 applications for proposed data centres requesting connection to the already creaking national grid, together requiring 50 gigawatts of energy- an energy demand that would double the amount of electricity that the UK currently needs to produce.

The lesson for the UK is that we should think very carefully before supporting AI Data Centres. Ofgem has reported on 140 applications for proposed data centres requesting connection to the already creaking national grid, together requiring 50 gigawatts of energy- an energy demand that would double the amount of electricity that the UK currently needs to produce.

Burnham’s government has just appointed a Minister for Artificial Intelligence. The job of Rt Hon Kanishka Narayan, MP, is to work with private AI companies, offering them billions of pounds in tax incentives to fast-track the “AI revolution” here in the UK. It’s likely to be money down the drain.

In North Devon, A data centre covering 850 acres including a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) is set to be twice the size of the largest AI data centre so far approved in the UK. Whilst our farmers will lose their lands and food production, the most serious loss is water access, already precarious.

Data centres not only require fresh drinking water from public treatment centres, they then have to further purify the water to remove particulates, limescale and so on, that can clog the cooling systems of the hot computer chips and batteries. The water is not recycled but mostly lost through the process.

This loss to our public supplies is serious.

There are many, many reasons for opposing Artificial Intelligence, the so-called jobs revolution is another falsehood. AI represents the opposite of human progress. Automated to minimise human employment, the Great Lie of a beneficial revolution for human liberation is best recognised through its priority use for military weapons development, autonomous drones and missiles, AI-designed biological weapons, trojan hacks destroying public service infrastructure and corrupting government information. The so-called jobs revolution is another falsehood – AI offers the opposite, automated to minimise human employment.

There is a growing list of reasons to oppose and shut down Artificial Intelligence. It’s the last thing we need right now. We appear to have given up on human intelligence – all the evidence and information surrounding AI should offer any rationale brain an abundance of proof that we have to stop it, now.